


Oi to the World

by IrishCoffee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrishCoffee/pseuds/IrishCoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's have a something of a throw back Thursday.</p><p>This is the start of Greg and Jim's first Christmas, it was actually two small drabbles written last year and I just pieced them together to make one complete work. Greg has a brand new house and a reason to decorate this holiday season so he takes the leap and does up the house while Jim's away on business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oi to the World

October had turned to November and, as usual, everything seemed focused on one thing: Christmas. Nearly two months away but the ads on the radio, flyers in paper, and commercials on the telly were all filled with jingling bells, cheesy songs, and all things red and green. Normally, Greg wouldn’t have bothered himself with the holiday, there’d be presents for his family, picked up at the last possible minute and excuses made about the high levels of crime during the season to get out of family dinners. It’s not that he didn’t want to spend time with his family, Greg visited as often as he could, but there was something about Christmas and how built around loved ones making it hard for a middle-aged, divorced man without the custody of his son to feel anything other than out of place among the other happy couples with their happy families.

This year was different though.

Maybe Greg didn’t magically gain an entire family but he did have a partner who’d started to attend family functions, slowly, with him. Things had started to become a ‘they’ situation and he was far from upset about this but the sudden interest in the holiday wasn’t because he had someone to bring to his brother’s house. It was because there was someone to spend the holiday with, they didn’t have to go anywhere in his opinion, but they sure as hell were celebrating.

With the holiday season smacking him in the face, Greg not only realized how close it was but how unprepared he was for it. He’d left his home with the minimum of possessions after the divorce, Christmas decorations weren’t the top of his list, hell not much was. So he had nothing and a big, new house to decorate.A house he wanted to decorate.

There were a few days of thinking, that half hour drive to work gave Greg some spare and quiet time where he could think this through. He thought about just decorating his office, maybe just some lights outside, this room, that room, every possibility seemed to run through his mind. Everything also had a reason why it didn’t work.

This holiday business was harder than he remembered. It’d been over twenty years since the man had to worry about first holidays with someone and it wasn’t at all something there was a handbook for, no right way to do this. It didn’t help that Greg and Jim had gone about their relationship entirely backwards.

A slow build up, dating for months before it came time for the awkward conversation about whose family to visit for the holiday didn’t happen. Jim was living in Greg’s flat, sleeping in his bed before the two had even thought about dating. They were dating for weeks before either confirmed it. All of this had happened in a few months.

This was their first Christmas together, though it didn’t feel like that could possibly true, and Greg wasn’t going to let it go by. This brand new home out in Brentwood, a kitchen that was nearly bigger than Greg’s old flat, was begging to start traditions and celebrate the holidays.

Of course, half of his problem was Jim, what did he want to do for this holiday? Family gatherings weren’t his thing but he went, so maybe holidays like this weren’t for Jim either. It wasn’t that Greg was trying to ignore the wants and needs of his partner but, at the same time, he knew he was going to force a bit of the holiday on Jim.

Holidays had never held any real significance to Jim personally. Any of them. Not even birthdays had ever been particularly special in the past, so the thought of celebrating Christmas after decades of ignoring it hadn’t even crossed Jim’s mind. He had, of course, noticed that Greg seemed to have taken a sudden interest.

Greg could always pretend he’d celebrated the season, every year, but he knew better than that at this point. There wasn’t a time he’d successfully duped Jim and wasn’t interested in trying to anymore, in fact he found himself being increasingly honest with Jim. You needed one good look at Greg to know he wasn’t the over-the-top Christmas type. Just because he actually wanted to celebrate this year, he wasn’t going to over do it, just a few things because things were worth celebrating.

He’d decided that their bar/movie area was the room he’d attack, one room in the house that was neither Greg’s or Jim’s was more than enough for them despite it being one of the largest rooms in the house, it seemed perfect. It could house a tree and there could be some lights strung around, stockings over the bar seemed more them than the fire place. There wasn’t a single downfall in the plan.

That’s when Greg started to slowly cultivate his own collection of decorations. A real tree was a necessity so that couldn’t be purchased yet but there was a lot more needed than that. It started as a quick trip out on his lunch break to buy a tree stand. Then, one night when Jim worked late, he popped in and bought some fairy lights. November went by filled with secret trips to shops and buying little pieces as he could. The storage room between their offices filled up with shopping bags as the weeks went on. The trips probably weren’t going unnoticed, the sneaking bags into an unused closet raised some eyebrows no matter how many times Greg went in while Jim was away, but he didn’t care.

Jim noticed the smell of nutmeg and pine that came from spending time in department and specialty stores, the bits of glitter residue on his shirt from simply being in the same facility as the flamboyant decorations, the occasional absentminded humming along to Christmas tunes on the telly. Either Greg found himself caught up in the excitement of holiday or he was fucking Mrs. Claus. Whatever the reason, Jim did not for a moment think that it was something the man would be sneaking into their home. He had simply assumed that it was a holiday that he and his grandmother celebrated and he had been getting supplies to do so, which was why the closet door showed evidence of opening over a dozen times, judging by the track marks made in the carpet from its opening and shutting.

Luck turned Greg’s way the second week of December when Jim had to go off to France for business, close enough to the holiday to not be overzealous, when Jim had to go away on business. It was only meant for a few days away but it could have been overnight and been enough for Greg. He left that morning for work, kissing Jim goodbye for the next few days, it was hard not to be this happy about it but it was the return he was looking forward too (though it always was). The days apart were getting easier but not this easy. Still, there was a stupid smile plastered to Greg’s face the entire drive to the city.

The days apart were getting easier as they grew more frequent and the men tried their best to hide the fact that they didn’t want to be apart, but this was different. There was an almost sort of pep in Greg’s step that he was clearly trying to repress as he came to see Jim off that caused him to take notice. But the more he thought about why that could have been, the more he began to blame the entire thing on his own pathetic feelings of not wanting to go so far away. Perhaps Greg did not feel as strongly as he did about the separation between them. The thought did not upset him, because it was logical that as time went on this desire to be together constantly would begin to dampen over time, especially as Jim’s business trips became more common. It did, however, make him question his own feelings and wonder if he was perhaps dwelling too much on his absence. Was he being too dramatic about the distance? It seemed likely. He had a liking for the dramatic and the way he longed at night for his own bed beside Greg, the way he anticipated a simple phone call or Skype session, was quite unnecessary now that he put it in perspective.

Still Jim got on the plane, feelings could be suppressed but work needed done. Not much additional thought was given to how well Greg was adjusting to these business trips. He was shifting from home body Jim to the world’s greatest criminal and it was best not to think of Greg at a time like that.

After his shift that night Greg stopped off in Brentwood, bought himself a tree and tied it to the roof is his car. The tree was on the smaller side, barely taller than Greg himself and it showed the modest man he was. Things may have changed in Greg’s life thanks to Jim, a more expensive taste, more colours and strange foods but beneath all the new was the same man that had always been there.

Jim loved it. The fact that even at his age Greg was willing to set aside things he’d been doing for decades and learn something new wasn’t half as important as the fact that Greg remained himself through all of it. Once he was comfortable enough with the things Jim was teaching, Greg would start to do so with his own personality. There was room for a ten foot tree with full thick branches but with Greg in charge he opted for the smaller six and a half foot one.

Not the easiest thing to maneuver, the tree, but it only took a minute and a failed attempt or two before Greg brought in successfully in the house and did so without a single scratch to his car or the house. Leaving it laying on the floor next to the bar, still wrapped in its netting, Greg went on about his nightly routine. Comfortable clothes, brewing a pot of coffee (he hated the nights he had to do it himself), and finding something to eat in the fridge.

Gone were the days of ordering in or having picked something up on the way home. There was always food there, Greg wasn’t suppose to notice, so he pretended he didn’t but he loved it, the thought that he couldn’t feed himself without Jim’s help always made him smile when it should have pissed him off. Various foods were left around the kitchen within Greg’s skill set and that went to his tastes but also mirrored the better food Jim had introduced him to and Greg made them. He liked how they ate, most of the time, and sometimes he took advantage of not being caught to order something he knew shouldn’t but most of the time Greg stuck with it, happily.

With the night’s normal routine out of the way, upstairs the man trudged to pulling down arm loads of bags from the second-story cupboard down to the first floor bar. Bags dropped all over the sofa, the bar top, and the floor, any available space. Folding up the game tables and putting them away, just for the next few weeks.

In the middle of the floor, stand screwed in tightly, Greg stood the tree up and fluffed the branches to get rid of the pressed down look of storage. It looked so much better open and standing in the room than Greg thought it would. He picked it up and moved the tree closer towards the back wall rather than the centre of the room, he felt that looked better.

Then in the most uncharacteristic move of the night, a night filled with uncharacteristic moves, he found the broom and swept up all the fallen needles into a pile off to the side. Greg was not known for how clean he was, the flat Jim fell into had more take away containers than actual decorations. It wasn’t training though, it was learning, he’d learnt new habits and cleanliness was among those.

If there was one problem Greg seen with this situation it was the amount of mess having an actual, dying pine tree in their house would create. Never mind the over decorated room, celebrating a holiday, or the lack of ping pong, it would be the mess. And like a child campaigning for a pet, Greg already had a speech queued about how he’d clean up after the tree and make sure to keep the mess as minimal as possible because a fake tree just wasn’t how you did things.

Wrapping basic white lights and silver tinsel around from top to bottom. Simple silver ornaments with accents of red and green, all bought from the same set so they matched, we hung sporadically around the tree.

Purchasing everything with some attempt to coordinate it all together. It was another skill Greg didn’t have but was trying to learn. His understanding of colours and what went with what still needed work but the effort was there and it didn’t look terrible. While his ability to match silver with silver was one thing, his decorating sense lacked and it still looked like a child hung the ornaments on the tree. With the first step successfully out of the way Greg called it a night and retired to his room to pretend to watch a movie before falling asleep.

~*~

The next day’s work ending and bringing Greg back to his quiet, empty home, he set about his normal routine again; comfortable clothes, pot of coffee, find some dinner. He was a man of routines born out of not knowing what to do and while much of that had changed in the past few months a few small bits remained. Once he’d eaten, it was back into the bar to continue last nights project.

Again, he swept the needles off the floor and put a simple red tree skirt down. It wasn’t what he wanted but they were all too gaudy and busy so the plain one was the best he could find. It’d be hidden buy presents anyways so it didn’t matter. A few more strings of lights were hung on the walls, these ones alternated red and green and were clearly hung by a man with no clue about decorating. They were just draped across the wall trying to mimic things he’d seen before and they looked great to Greg. The same lights went around the bar, pulled tight and stretching from one end to the other.

Some bells with big red ribbons went up and against the wall. A big wreath was hung behind the bar with smaller wreaths hung around the room. As he’d planned, stockings were hung behind the bar with the wreath, ignoring completely the fireplace in the room with a mantle that stockings could be hung from. Leftover tinsel was hung around the mantle however and Greg dragged in some red candles from another room to sit up there.

On the bar top sat a little nativity scene that had been given to Greg on his last visit to his grandma’s, she’d said no house was really a home without the nativity. Neither Greg nor Jim celebrated the religious aspect of Christmas (or of anything) but Greg wasn’t one to tell his grandma no and a little bit of family around in a house that had yet to form tradition, was nice to have.

Pouring himself a drink, Greg looked around the area, one that didn’t look unlike Christmas in your first flat, the decorations were right and were hung with care but they were also hung so haphazardly that it was clear the person putting them up didn’t know what they were doing. Greg didn’t see this, he seen a room that was now glowing with the season. If he could have, he would baked something so it smelled like those good Christmases he remembered.

Taking his drink over to the couch in the theatre room, Greg plopped down, still proud, and was about to start watching something when his phone rang. Jim was calling, a call Greg ended up on until he fell asleep. Waking up some hours later, the red/green glow lighting everything up since the television had turned itself off, even half asleep he was still proud his work as he unplugged everything and made way upstairs to bed.

~*~

The gang at work had taken to making fun of Greg for his new found dependency on his phone and today he was giving them cause. Making sure the thing around with him everywhere, going so far as keeping it in his hand. Today Jim came home. Greg had made sure to plug all the lights in before leaving for work, he left the door to the bar open so when Jim came in the house he could see right in. If he couldn’t be there when his man came home, at least he’d make sure his hard work could be seen.

Unlike other things Greg had done in the past, this wasn’t as much for the surprise as other things had been. This was a little bit more of something that was going to happen no matter what but just in case Jim didn’t want it he was going to come home to a situation where it was too late to do anything about it. Hopefully he’d want to add to it, bring in more but there was the smallest chance Greg would return home to it all packed neatly back in boxes.

Maybe next year this could happen together, maybe Greg should have asked what was wanted rather than taking the opportunity from Jim this year, but he was still that man of action. Talking wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he’d just put the decorations up and see what happened from there.

When Jim finally got home after the few days away his attention turned to the faint glowing of red and green flashing from behind the curtains from outside of the house, immediately going from his relaxed state to one of alert protectiveness. Placing his bags down outside of the door as carefully as possible, Jim took the revolver that he kept strapped to his calf when he traveled from its holster and smoothed over his trousers before straightening up his posture. He did not know what was going on inside but it was out of the ordinary and the thought of someone breaking into his home and messing with the smooth way things had come to run rubbed Jim all the wrong ways. He rolled his head in that reptilian fashion and cocked the gun before unlocking the home silently with his phone and then proceeding to slip inside. Revolver held tight but down at his side, Jim made his way towards the bar and in turn the flashing, his instincts on full alert.

When he peaked his head around the corner to look into the bar, Jim’s arms fell limp, all tension releasing from his body as he realized what was really going on. His head fell forward to his chest and he chuckled, bringing the hand with the gun in it to the back of his head to rub at it in embarrassment despite it being completely unsafe. “You son of a bitch,” Jim muttered fondly with a shake of his head. He returned the gun safely to its position before moving about the newly decorated room and taking a better look.  
The lights slightly skewed, there were stray pine needles on the ground (though he did note that they had been swept up previously, which brought a smile to his face), and the entire room looked as though it a last minute thought for a couple of university kids after a few beers and a phone call to say their parents were on the way. It was positively Greg and rather than irk Jim the off centered and slanted decorations caused the small smile on Jim’s face to expand.

The entire thing was thoughtful, endearing, and actually made Jim feel rather warm inside. Not in the same way that Greg often made him feel, but similar at the same time. There was a comfort to the whole atmosphere that made the only place he’d even considered a home (other than Greg’s flat) feel more like home.

It was welcoming, homey, and reminded him that he had something worth celebrating this year. For the first time in his life Jim found himself welcoming the festiveness that came with the holidays rather than being the Scrooge that he often was. While still standing amongst the blinking lights Jim pulled out his phone and text Greg with a smile still plastered to his face.

'Doofus. — J x'

Greg’s phone had barely finished vibrating before he was sliding along the screen to unlock it. Not a single doubt in his mind as to who the message was from. He didn’t understand the letters at the end, just knowing they made a face supposedly, but the single word had Greg grinning ear to ear instantly.  
Donovan caught the smile, one of a handful of people who knew Greg was even in a relationship and rather than take the easy jab at her boss for being on his phone or make a crack about not seeing a look like that often.

“He’s home innit he, boss?”

“Yep.”

“Seen the room?”

“He has.”

“I’m guessing he liked it?”

“He insulted me.”

“Even better.”

Back in Brentwood after having hit send Jim took one final look around the room, he turned and made his way towards the door to grab his bags and take them upstairs. He left them sitting on the bed which he never would have done a few months ago and changed out of his formal attire and into a pair of jeans, a plain black v—neck, and one of Greg’s zip up hoodies. Once comfortable he made his way towards the back door in just a pair of bright orange socks, with his phone in hand and a cigarette from one of Greg’s many packs he left laying around the house hanging from his lips. He had a few calls to make.

By the time it was getting close for Greg to come home Jim had taken care of everything he’d wanted to. There was garland hanging from the fireplace and around areas of the living room, there were lights hung in various places throughout the house that he had done himself, but everything was quite minimal. It was enough to show that they were, in fact, celebrating, but nothing too over the top. Not inside, at least. One thing he did not touch in the slightest, though, was the bar. He left every skewed light fixture and every uneven bow just as they were.

With the coffee brewed and Jim with his own cup, having added everything he needed to in order to make it palatable, something he was still occasionally mocked for, and made his way back outside, taking a seat on the furniture around the lit fire pit and pulling his feet up under him. He sipped at his coffee with his phone in hand, his eyes going between the screen and the flickering firelight. His ears perked up when he heard the sound of the door closing and his eyes moved back to the screen to text the man who had just entered the house.

’I’m out back. — J x’

As he heard Greg’s footsteps approaching Jim moved to hit another button on his phone and suddenly the backyard lit up with an elegant white light display. Lights covered the trees, the overhang, and everything in between, twinkling softly to a silent melody. With that he waited for Greg, pocketing his phone and relaxing back into the furniture.

Again Greg’s phone was in his hand when it vibrated, no longer because he was waiting for a message but because the nightly routine involved dumping the contents of his pockets onto the table by the door and his phone was part of that. Half expecting it to be work, Greg almost didn’t check it but with a reluctant huff he unlocked the phone only to find a message from Jim.

Shaking his head, still not use to texting someone in the same house as you. Greg had always lived in the type of place you could yell out and get someone’s attention both in size and in the people who resided with him. That wasn’t how Jim worked. Greg mumbled ‘idiot’ and tossed the phone down, shedding the jacket and everything else like he normally would.

It was the rest of the routine he skipped, no coffee, no comfortable clothes, just heading out back where he’d been summoned. The glow was unmistakable as soon as Greg truly entered the house. Their living room was expansive and had a wall of windows. What Jim had done to the place could have been seen from space, Greg certainly wasn’t going to miss it.

Stepping outside he walked over to where Jim was sitting, shaking his head. His smile was bright, though Jim felt the need to out do his tiny display in the bar, Greg didn’t care (even though he should have). It was the okay that this holiday stuff was going to happen and clearly in a big way. Rather than express gratitude or excitement, Greg did the only thing he could, and started to mock Jim.

“And I’m the doofus?”

With that, and not another word, Greg sat down beside Jim. Still in his work clothes, feet up on the table and laying back against the seat, Greg took it all in. The smile didn’t leave his face, in fact it grew as he reached out and stole the mug of coffee from Jim. A move that Jim didn’t protest because he knew Greg would hate the taste of what he was about to drink, he could wait for that moment instead.

“Musta made some money on this trip…” Greg teased “...the electricity bill is going to outrageous.”


End file.
